Verbal overshadowing effect: How temporal perspective may exacerbate or alleviate the processing shift

Generating a detailed, memory-based description of a non-verbal perceptual stimulus can impair later recognition of that stimulus - an effect termed verbal overshadowing (VO). After viewing a face for 10 seconds, half the participants wrote a description of it; the others completed an unrelated task. Participants then either imagined their proximal or distant future, or completed an unrelated task. Following a recognition test for the face previously presented, all the 75 participants attempted to solve three insight problems. A robust VO effect was observed for participants who imagined their proximal future; that is, providing a description of the face impaired their later recognition of that face. In contrast, those who imagined their distal future showed no such impairment. Furthermore, distal imagining participants solved more insight problems compared to proximal, and control condition participants. The results of this study provide support for a processing shift interpretation of VO.